


orpheus & eurydice

by hellalujah



Series: metamorphoses - a collection of modern myths [1]
Category: Electronic Dance Music RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, M/M, Modernized Myth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 12:44:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7845484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellalujah/pseuds/hellalujah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Orpheus sang his grief with his lyre and managed to move everything living or not in the world; both humans and gods were deeply touched by his sorrow and grief."</p>
            </blockquote>





	orpheus & eurydice

**Author's Note:**

> pay attention to that major character death warning, it's very real
> 
> thanks to caz for betaing

_all lovely things at last go down to you._  
 _you are the debtor who is always paid._  
 _a little while we tarry up on earth._  
 _then we are yours forever and forever._  
 _but I seek one who came to you too soon._  
 _the bud was plucked before the flower bloomed._  
 _I tried to bear my loss. I could not bear it.  
_ \- Orpheus  & Eurydice, Book X, Ovid’s Metamorphoses

\---

Mat’s hands move on his guitar like it’s an extension of his body. Chords ringing out across a crowd that only seconds ago was screaming his name, now profoundly, solemnly silent.

His voice lifts over them and it’s good - it sounds good, it _feels_ so good to sing and to play and everyone’s eyes are on him and normally people make him nervous but he feels _good_. Nothing can touch him like this.

And Porter’s watching him from the side stage, he knows. He feels safe, knowing that.

When he finishes the crowd goes wild. They’re screaming affirmations and something bright and huge is blooming in his chest.

He’s _happy_.

He finally walks off stage and Porter is grinning so wide it must hurt and Mat loves him, he loves him more than he can stand.

“They love you,” he hisses happily, grabbing Mat's face with both hands and bringing their foreheads together. “You're a superstar.”

Mat swings his guitar behind him on its strap to reach up and cup Porter's jaw. “I don't care,” he says, and when Porter looks confused he grins. “As long as I have you, I don’t care what they think of me.”

Porter looks at him, dazed for a moment, then starts to laugh and it’s bright and clear and Mat wants to sing. “I love you,” Porter says against Mat's lips before he kisses him. 

\---

 “You can't see him anymore,” says Eric. He doesn't even look at Mat when he says it, just keeps tapping his pen against the stack of contracts in front of him.

“What?” Mat's stomach ties itself in an sick knot and his manager glances up.

“You can't see Porter,” he repeats, slower this time like Mat's an idiot. “You're getting too big, the fans don't like that shit. As your manager,” and Mat has to roll his eyes - “I’m telling you; you have to break up with him.”

“I'm not breaking up with Porter,” Mat laughs because it sounds so fucking ridiculous even to say. “I love Porter more than anything, I'm not breaking up with him.”

Eric eyes him for a moment before shrugging and going back to his contracts. “Too bad,” he says. “You gotta.”

\---

 “It's okay,” says Porter quietly, taking Mat's hands in his own. “We can keep in touch and maybe in a couple of years, maybe we can try-,”

“Porter, come on,” Mat says, and it comes out desperate. “You can't possibly think that this is a good idea.”

Porter worries at his bottom lip and Mat wants to kiss him. He always does.

“You’re the only one I want,” says Mat. His voice breaks and Porter squeezes his hands and Mat sucks in a breath. “I don’t care about the money or the fame or anything, you’re all that I want.”

Porter breathes out a watery laugh. “Mat. Everyone loves you so much already, you have to keep performing. You’re so good, what you do is so special. Your music is like magic.” He sighs shakily and Mat knows he’s trying so hard not to cry.

“Look, I'll make a deal with them, okay? They don't want me to see you at all, I’ll tell them to put a time on it. Or I’ll quit.” He clings to Porter's hands. “I love you so much,” he says fiercely. “I can’t be without you.”

“I love you too,” says Porter and he’s crying now, crying but determined, and he leans in to kiss Mat with a ferocity that matches the fire in his eyes. 

\---

 “Eight months,” says Eric. “That's literally the best I can do. But you can't see him at all in that time. You shouldn't talk to him either; no texting, no calling, no Skype. Deal?”

“Deal,” says Mat, and he scribbles his signature on the contract.

“It's for your own good,” Eric tells him. “And Porter's. Trust me.”

\---

 They last three weeks, the three weeks that Mat is touring up and down the east coast before he sneaks off after a show in New York and shows up at Porter's apartment.

Their apartment, technically. But it's Porter's now. Mat has a loft in Tribeca and it's beautiful but he doesn't care because it's not home because Porter's not there.

He still has the key to their - _Porter's_ \- Brooklyn apartment and he lets himself in. Porter is staring wide eyed at the door like he's expecting someone else until he sees Mat and then his face is crumbling and he's _running_ down the hall and into Mat's arms.

“Christ,” he's hissing in Mat's ear and his arms tighten around him briefly before he's pulling away and mashing their mouths together, slamming the door and pushing Mat up against it and kissing him and kissing him and Mat wants to cry with how much he'd _missed_ _Porter_.

He pulls away, just a bit, to try and say so. But Porter is panting and flushed and his eyes are so dark and he's grabbing at Mat's shoulders. Mat wants to tell him how much he loves him, how much he’d missed him. How every day without him has been agony.

“Bed,” Mat says, instead of everything else, and Porter grins.

\---

 “What did I _tell_ you?” Eric’s voice is shrill and Mat flinches when he slaps down a stack of magazines on the desk in front of him. They’re plastered with Mat’s face, which isn’t anything new, but _Porter_ is with him, paparazzi shots of Porter running down the steps of his walkup, Porter kissing Mat, and they’re both smiling, smiling, smiling.

“I’m sorry,” Mat says lamely, and Eric lets out a strangled yell of frustration.

“Sorry isn’t going to fix this. Do you even realize what you’ve done?”

“We don’t have to hide anymore,” Mat snaps abruptly, before he can stop himself. “Why does it matter? It was going to come out eventually anyway, now we can go public and-,”

Eric’s angry bark of laughter cuts him off and Mat stares at him.

“You really don’t get it,” Eric says, shaking his head with disbelief. “You’re at a sensitive place in your career, you’re putting your safety and Porter’s safety at risk. _Christ_.”

Mat clenches his jaw. “Just give him some security, I can afford it.”

Eric’s face is tight and they’re both tensely silent for a moment.

“What’s done is done,” Eric says, quiet and resigned, and Mat’s stomach twists ominously.

\---

It’s in the news before anyone actually tells Mat.

Two weeks after the media incident, and he hadn’t been allowed to see Porter at all, had Eric breathing down his neck at all hours.

And then Eric texts him, tells him not to go online today. Don’t even go outside.

Mat goes online.

The headlines are all basically the same - _Rising Pop Star’s Secret Lover Dead At 25_ , or some variation thereof. Mat doesn’t understand at first, can’t process it and starts clicking through to the articles like he’s in a trance.

According to a police report, ‘Zohar’s unnamed lover’ was found dead in an alleyway early that morning from a single gunshot wound through the neck. An investigation is underway.

It’s all the same information, every article over and over and over, but Mat can’t stop reading it, doesn’t stop until ‘dead in an alleyway’ might as well be tattooed on his retinas.

He doesn’t react. He doesn’t feel much of anything.

He hadn’t even been able to say goodbye.

\---

Mat writes an album of music about Porter and it goes not double but _triple_ platinum in under a week, breaks a record set nearly twenty years ago, and he doesn’t care.

His management sets up a tour, almost forty dates across North America, a dozen across Europe.

Mat tells them to go fuck themselves and he gets it down to one show in London and half a dozen in the States.

Every single show sells out the day tickets go on sale.

Mat doesn’t care.

\---

Sometimes he thinks he hears Porter talking to him, laughing, but only when he plays. Sometimes when he closes his eyes it’s like Porter is there with him. It’s like the sun is shining on his face.

It’s the only reason he keeps making music. When Mat isn’t playing all he feels is cold.

\---

Mat steps out back of the stadium and fumbles a cigarette out of his pack. He nearly drops it; he's drunk, has been for hours. He's just played the biggest show of his career and he feels nothing. Nothing at all.

Almost a hundred thousand fans at the show, millions more in the world, if the record sales are anything to go by.

But he doesn't care. He doesn't need any of this. Doesn't want it. He just wants Porter back.

He’d fucked up, tonight. In between his last two songs he’d announced his retirement, that he was quitting touring and probably releasing music indefinitely and the reaction had been a cacophony of screaming and tears and Mat couldn’t even bring himself to feel bad.

He’s tired. He just wants to live quietly and write music for himself and for Porter’s memory.

“Hello,” says a girl’s voice. Mat turns and pushes a little smile onto his face, finishes his cigarette.

“Hi,” he says. “You probably shouldn’t be back here.”

She smiles back at him. “You shouldn’t quit.”

Mat shrugs and starts shaking another smoke out of his pack. “I’m tired,” he says after a pause. “It’s time, I think.”

She watches him for a second, face carefully blank but eyes flashing with something Mat doesn’t care enough about to decipher. “I thought once your boyfriend was gone you’d be more focused,” she says, tilting her head. “But now you’re quitting.”

“What?” Mat jolts a bit at the mention of Porter, nearly drops his cigarette. His hands are shaking and she’s smiling at him again and he kind of feels like throwing up.

“He was pretty,” she says conversationally, as though he hadn’t spoken at all. “I can see why you might have been into him. But you should have been focusing on your music. On us. The fans, you know.”

“You should go.” Mat’s still got his unlit cigarette in his hand, he hadn’t even noticed it bending until suddenly it's snapping and he drops it on the ground.

She looks him in the eye and then sighs. “There’s no changing your mind, is there?”

For a moment he feels like telling her everything, that maybe if Porter was alive he'd still want to make music. That he was the only thing that mattered to him, fans be damned.

Instead he just shakes his head, slow and deliberate, and she sighs again.

“That's a bummer,” she says, reaching into her purse. Then she giggles. “This'll probably hurt me more than it'll hurt you, if you'll excuse the cliche.”

“What are you-,”

She shakes her head and he stops when she smiles sweetly at him. “For what it's worth, I'm sure you'll look as pretty as he did while you're dying.”

It finally clicks in his head and he opens his mouth again, goes to take a step forward -

The sound is deafening, so loud that his ears are ringing and he can't process what had happened. It takes what feels like forever for him to blink once, then bring his hands up to his throat on instinct more than anything.

She'd shot him. Shot him through the throat and the blood pouring from the wound is impossibly hot as it spills between his fingers.

He opens his mouth to say something, can't manage anything more than a strange gurgle. The girl looks sad when he blinks hazily at her.

“Sorry,” she says. She's tucking the gun back into her purse as Mat goes to his knees. He thinks it's supposed to hurt. But it doesn't.

For a moment he wishes he could talk, so he could thank her.

He smiles when he falls to the side, still clutching his throat. Still gushing blood.

Mat doesn't know what he believes in, doesn't know whether or not he'll see Porter wherever he's going. But it's a nice thought.

He was tired anyway.


End file.
